


The Others Of His Kind

by Mauser_Frau



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Blood, Character Study, Cults, Finance, Gen, Leech Lord, Offscreen Violence, Sol PoV, conspicuous consumption, dead bodies, no over-the-top Tyreen today she's not even in it, offscreen sex, plus that wouldn't be canon, really bad short jokes, that terrible thing you get when you cross finance and cults
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27779362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mauser_Frau/pseuds/Mauser_Frau
Summary: Solomon Blatcjky is leaving for Pandora tomorrow morning.  He would rather not, but he has only one client and they require his presence.In which the Saint of Finances returns to Pandora for a mandatory holiday despite knowing full well that something will go awry.  And it does.Featuring that deliciousLeech Lordcanon, just a couple of corpses and one strange reminiscence.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	The Others Of His Kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BorderSpam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BorderSpam/gifts).



> A Leech Lord Character Study In Mauser Frau  
> Leech Lord & Solomon Blatcjky ℅ BorderSpam  
> His Ficlet Appears Here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25486936/chapters/64056445

Solomon Blatcjky is leaving for Pandora tomorrow morning. 

He would rather not, but he has only one client and they require his presence. 

Everyone has their price for what they will not do, and presented that price, suddenly there is no not.

It’s a bit ironic, he thinks, gazing out of the window of this particular penthouse and over the neon haze below, that these two children found his. 

The first time they ‘invited’ him, Tyreen phrased it blithely: “You should come hang out with us, Sol!” He still holds a dislike for the clipped way she says his name. He declined. 

Then Troy: “C’mon, you’re a literal Saint here. People will bow to you and feed you grapes. It’ll be fun.” Sol can pay people to bow to him any time he likes. He does not like grapes. The offer did not tempt him. 

Finally, the faceless messenger in holy robes: “The Twin Gods require your presence.” That time, Sol had his bags packed within the hour.

He thinks they might have learned that trick from him, that certain way of manipulating power distance by not being there in person. Didn’t he send them actual paper mail before the three of them ever sat in a room together? They must remember. They are sharper than they seem, but not more than he can manage.

Two or three trips a year to Pandora keep them satisfied. The alternative is he wastes time extracting himself from these summons, and all of them make less money.

That is his price. He’s pleased to be so damned expensive.

~*~

Sol travels alone, no statuesque femme to tower over him and talk sweetly to the spaceport staff, no masc of his own size to cling prettily to his arm, and no android to carry his luggage. There’s no need for a porter, actually. He takes only a fine leather weekender bag and a powder-finish, vacuum-proof unscannable briefcase.

He has dismissed his staff by giving them other assignments and instructing them not to report back to him before certain dates. A clever spy might realize he’s left Harrier, but the cleverer spies work for him, and he is not concerned. 

He strides through the terminal dressed like a well-to-do tourist who’s chosen to wear their sunglasses indoors. He could (alternatively) be any of the Tinks piling onto the maintenance trolleys and zooming around the floor, shouting for travellers to get out of their way. 

He watches some speed past, expecting one or two to fall. He’s oddly disappointed when none do. But that’s no concern of his. 

Sol weaves through the clots of people, down to the private vehicle terminal.

Here the staff do not remark. They do not say his name. They escort him on board the white and red CoV vessel. Despite the garish exterior, it’s appointed like any ship of corporate necessity inside— very beige and very rich and very quiet. The stewards are the same ones the twins sent the last time and they are trained well enough. 

One brings him a glass with a single ice sphere. Another serves him a selection of synth jazz on a dedicated, personal player which has actual bass, unlike the average ECHO.

Sol reaches into his briefcase. A third of it is occupied by a flacon of scotch older than his clients’ ages multiplied. Sol pours himself two fingers and he presses play and he plans how his report will go. He rarely writes any presentations down anymore unless they’re for the use of other people. As for the hard data involved, he could find the smallest, newest, flimsiest account under any one of the Children of the Vault’s shell corporations from memory. 

That’s what he gets for having a mind made to recognize the innards of complex machinery at a glance. To know one individual tank from another, one valve issue from ten, one Hag from another in the same face paint so he doesn’t jump onto the wrong one and realize he has no idea how she functions when she’s high enough to fight.

Sol stares into his glass. Still only scotch. No loose wires. He does not finish the millions of dollars waiting there before the pilot announces that he’s arrived. 

The mad people of the desert, besides insisting on voices and eyes in the ether, say that Pandora warps space time itself to greet new bodies with prophecy.

If that’s true— he chooses to believe it is not —then Sol finds his tableaux distasteful at best. The Holy City gleams and grinds, pieces of it crammed together; others, like his landing site, stretched thin and dusty. It chases itself, garish with festival colors, through the heat shimmer. The nun who greets him apologizes. There are “a few” dead bodies on the road. If he would step this way so he doesn’t have to see.

“You do realize…” Sol begins as he peers around her.

The bodies are two Psychos at an obscene angle. Saint Ur-Machina is on the scene with some of her crew. As she turns towards him, she lifts her spanner and then stops as though someone cut her rigging.

“…I know what people do for fun around here. I am a Saint, after all.” Sol makes one of those eyes in the darkness gestures the exceptional fanatics do at the nun.

The nun bows. The platform stairs creak as they descend. It is hot. Very hot.

Sol would much rather be in any one of his penthouses right now.

Of course, he doesn’t own so many as a show of power. Penthouses are fungible, frankly cliche things.

It’s not his need to have more than one hideout that’s driven him to keep so many when he could buy a square block and call the place his fortress.

No, the cleverest of all keep their stores and themselves split. A skag who plays two dens lives after the Psychos pass though.

~*~

There aren’t hotels in the Holy City. Well, there are places purporting to be hotels. Sol would not stay at one. 

He accepts that he will be given a space somewhere in the non-euclidian convolutions of the Grand Cathedral. There will be a note on the table implying he should have brought his “way cool” sanctum ship, because Tyreen knows very well that he didn’t.

The room is Terran Roman with a hot tub for an impluvium and only one real window. The rest are monitors made to impersonate windows. There is wine and there is scotch. There is a bell to ring for a boy to taste the wine and scotch. The note from Tyreen occupies the center of the desk in the tablinum, pinned there by a star sapphire. On it, sanctum is spelled with a K. 

Tyreen’s handwriting has improved over the years, but it’s also gotten jagged and oddly-spaced. Of course, Sol has kept his criticisms of her penmanship to himself since he first witnessed said atrocity. 

He clears off his desk. Certain that the room is empty and scanned for spying equipment, he opens his briefcase.

Another third of it holds two suspension-packed foi gras and neo-Iberian ham sandwiches on artisanal focaccia. He opens one and pours himself two fingers of his own scotch as he picks through the monitors, changing what cameras they access. The Children of the Vault have live feeds everywhere. Eyes in the darkness and all that.

But if Ur-Machina was cleaning up dead bodies today, then where are the other Saints? Something is not to specifications about this occasion. Something is always off with this client, but he will know what he is getting into for the function tomorrow. And if someone needs to go missing, so be it, Saint or no Saint. He’ll find a cleaner. He’ll ring the bell and bribe the boy. The boy can join him or go missing. 

Well, Ur-Vinum is hosting an orgy. That isn’t news. Nor are the Psychos flinging themselves at the gates in fits of holy passion, the people dancing on the streets. He cannot escape those, not even when he has finished his sandwich and gone to his one real window for a moment’s consideration. About what, he shortly forgets.

He sees her.

She is the most magnetic Hag he has ever gazed upon: twice Sol’s height, her biceps thicker than he could get his arms around, shoulders wider than he could stretch. She seems to have a bit more leg to her than most Hags and her thighs storm enormous. Her face is so perfectly angular, even her Habsburg chin— she could be a piece of art deco abstraction. Her beady eyes shine so bright and her mouth grins so wide in berry stain lipstick. 

Sol touches the glass out of longing, there in the Pandoran night. He leaves his glove print on the cathedral glass between himself and that woman. He yearns to twist himself around her. He wants to fix her car. If she shot him into battle, her name would be his warcry. 

It’s preposterous of course. Solomon Blatcjky Saint Ur-Aurum of the Children of the Vault has never dirtied his hands with plain physical strife. He has people for that. He has not once offered skag testicles to anyone he like-liked. No one should do either of those things: say like-like or touch skag testicles. 

He watches her though, that magnetic Hag down there in the crowd of cultists. He thinks about things that were and will not be again. He would not call it remembering if there’s no one left alive to reminisce with.

~*~

Sol’s regalia for the Holy-Day Meat Sermon makes sense to someone. That person is not Sol. But it doesn’t need to make sense. It just needs to fit. It does. He is glad the Saint’s mask covers his face.

Like all Saints, he will be presented featureless to the crowd. He will, though, have this done while in a golden tunic and trousers, a Corona Civica dotted with rubies perched on his head and mandatory rings on every finger. 

Costuming has been talked out of a wreath of necklaces, allowing him one heavy platinum chain. They did not force him into a robe and there are no lifts in his shoes. It will not be like last year.

Sol accepts a latte made with Nororastrian civet coffee for breakfast and proceeds to the pre-service drill. The other Saints laugh and bicker and threaten to murder each other. They are a more wretched, motley lot than the average cross-section of the Holy City: people from off-planet, people who’ve never left Pandora’s orbit. At least one Sol is fairly sure died on Pandora who’s only still around out of spite or nanomachines.

None of them are harmless and a few of them smell. They all look ridiculous. 

All they have to do is cross the raised walkway and take their places on the stairs leading up to the day-glo, skull-slathered pulpit-stage. Preferably, they do this without knocking down any skulls. The people below will shout and swoon and throw things in delight as this occurs.

Music blares, lights scream, Sol grits his teeth and marches. Few people appreciate the scale of the Grand Cathedral of the Twin Gods. The church occupies not half of that place and it dwarfs most stadiums. It reeks of humanity, sand and marijuana.

Sol takes at least two steps for one of the other Saints’.

Event planning has, once again, sorted by height, meaning he marches opposite Ur-Machina, stands at the lowest curves of the pulpit-stage, towards the edge of the sunlight engulfing Troy and Tyreen.

The two of them would strike him as majestic, but he has seen their burger-stained bank statements. 

As for Ur-Machina, he could almost throw something at her from the distance they now share. He considers if she might be watching him as sharply as he watches her across all the other Saints.

Pyrotechnics fire. Guitar riffs play. The twins rant and rave.

Yes, yes. It’s all good. It’s all fine. It’s going to rain meat and we’ll all be together in the Great Vault. Meanwhile, none of us will get our taxes done on time. 

Sol pays some attention if only on the off chance the something amiss is a very stupid act of terrorism in the works. He might need to dodge or run. Those acts should still come to him by instinct, though it would be so much easier if he had a Hag to carry him out of the chaos.

(But you should be flung into the violence, an old, small part of him protests. You should be the violence yourself.)

No. Any Hag who called him hers would understand by now that things have changed.

Sol looks up towards the searing colors of the cathedral vault.

A lot of things have changed since the twins walked into his office with $5,000 and one of them picked at the olive tray he offered them as though it would bite and the other whistled something which Sol still hasn’t managed to decode. 

The crowd has gone quieter than before. He senses it on his fingertips, the only part of him exposed. Neither twin speaks.

The other Saints have looked upwards as well. In fact, all of the retinue have done this; the priests and nuns; the faithful and the mad.

Sol considers his options if this lull is the result of him inadvertently calling attention to himself.

Out of the silence and dust motes, Troy begins to beatbox. The air fills with joyous praise, a breath Sol did not realize he was holding.

~*~

It surprises him not at all that the banquet includes fifteen different kinds of olives, besides a plethora of other dainties and delicacies in uncountable numbers and variety. It is obscene, the bathtub of punch made from fine, aged liquors from across the Six Galaxies mixed with powdered soda barely the worst of it.

Sol picks at some stone fruit and aged cheese. Stone fruit is annoying to poison and most cleaners won’t bother with hard cheese since it’s served in such small portions.

The things he has learned since he doesn’t have to fill his mind with the details of tank treads.

Say, exactly how many of the other Saints he must address to appear social and how long each one will take. Ur-Aqua is a literal sort, accepting hello, how are you, that went well, then moving on. Ur-Vinum is worn out from last night. A raised fork will suffice. Ur-Crucias, despite her office, is amicable enough, though she always tries to get him to drink punch with her. 

There are others he avoids for reasons of complexity or antipathy. Ur-Munitio talks in circles and Ur-Machina is suddenly standing right in front of him, now wearing her veil and headpiece over her work overalls for some reason Sol will not fathom. She has a soup bowl of curry and a slice of blue cake. 

“Oh, hey, Sol,” she says. He can hear her labret smacking when she talks.

“Yes, hello,” he replies. 

She talks again, words clipping into his, “So hey, Tyreen said you didn’t bring your ship ‘round.”

Speaking of people Sol avoids at these functions. Whatsmore, he thought Ur-Machina had learned to do likewise at least last year. “I didn’t want to disrupt the families of my crew.”

“That’s big of you.”

Silence twangs between them. Sol unconsciously looks at his shoes. Ur-Machina becomes very interested in her curry, worrying a dab of oil on the surface with her spoon. 

Sol takes a controlled breath. He makes himself smile. It smarts. “I’m not appreciably smaller than you. I’m not sure what you’re worried about.” He nibbles a piece of cheese.

Her eyes blink wide for half an instant. Her mind sputters. 

He can feel the fumes. 

She proceeds to giggle-snort and glance away into the banquet crowd. “Nothing! Nothing! I was just thinking maybe I should, er, be big to my crew too. Bet the kitchen’s already lining up scraps. I should have some sent out.”

“Assuming your crew’s around.”

“I’m sure some of ‘em stayed.”

“Mechanic’s prerogative.”

“I guess. Like, you know, not moving your ship. I don’t know why she’s so hung up on that. It’s silly now I know why. Anyway…”

“The Parsifal’s Dance Roncal is delicious if you would like to try that.”

“You know, I think I will. Thanks, Sol.” Ur-Machina departs in a flash of golden skulls and coriander.

He was not expecting her to thank him. How tiresome of her to pretend she cares after, well, whatever that was out at the landing site. After everything each of them does for this little organization.

The truth is, Sol’s sanctum Ship is nearly too large to move. His crew live aboard with their families in the outer ring, while his personal quarters occupy a central orb. 

He doesn’t concern himself with feeding them. He has a department for that. He no longer lives so close to the oil on a shop floor that food besides his own would cross his mind. 

Ur-Machina… what kind of person would work for another who had no sense of scale, no honor for authority? Who ate with her subordinates as though this meant everything and nothing to her? He’s glad he’s not of their kind, whatever blasted kind that is. 

He can still smell oil for an instant before he sinks his teeth into his stone fruit.

~*~ 

Once the festivities have moved back to the streets where they belong— it takes hours —Sol meets with Troy on the man’s sanctum ship in a small, decently appointed sideroom. It reminds Sol of the CoV vessel which brought him to Pandora. It’s also the only place on the ship he has seen besides the corridors. God King’s prerogative, he supposes.

Troy retains most of his regalia, though his coat has been switched out for one with fewer diamonds. “Evening. Make yourself comfortable and let’s do this thing.” Troy himself takes up an entire oversize settee. He is somewhat intoxicated based on his droop.

No matter. He’ll interrupt less that way.

Sol takes the small chair meant for him. He removes a thumb drive of reports from his weekender bag and places this on the table between them.

Troy acts like this surprises him. He makes several overzealous sounds of delight and then pretends to trade food for the item.

They share a plate of melon and double prosciutto dusted with gold flake, a piece of which sticks in one of Troy’s mechanical knuckles in such a way that he is obliged to lick it off. Sol absolutely doesn’t observe his prehensile tongue while rattling off new bond options. That would be gauche, but so would an overbalance of MTA-3-ORSTX.

Sol talks his way down the good and bad and otherwise. There is mostly good. A few of the commodities funds have disappointed, but they do that.

He is faltering, faintly, he thinks. Being here, this place that was never his home. Not even underneath all of the nevers he’s told himself. He only has to get through tonight, and the early morning trip to the CoV ship that will return him to Harrier.

The Pandoran nights are long though. So long; sweat-sticky or frigid. Restless like the planet turns all things. He reaches the end of his report in due time, long after the melon is finished and there’s been grappa and Troy’s lit up a joint in.

“In conclusion, my only real concerns are the investments outlined in the REITs file. I realize that many of them are technically your sister’s holdings, so that, I’m afraid, I will need your assistance adjusting.”

“Sure,” says Troy. He stretches again. “Good show today.”

“As always, but better than last year.”

“Yeah, man. Sorry about the lifts. That was rude.”

A flash of satisfaction crosses Sol. Into that instance, he ventures, “No matter. I suppose a certain number of dead bodies are inevitable in a death cult.” It sounds like he could be speaking metaphorically. 

Troy though pulls out of his slouch. His movements make clicking sounds, barely audible. He smiles, fangs pricking out. “Ah, those two. Those two were yours.”

“How so?” 

“They were your faithful, man. All Saints got faithful. They died especially for you.”

Sol shifts in his chair, folding his hands. This. He does not know what to make of this. People have died because of him, but he’s always had some agency in the decision. He should feel disgust. Instead, he feels robbed. “They could have asked me what I wanted.”

“Could they? You’re a pretty inaccessible dude.” 

“I will make myself moreso if this continues.”

“So put out an official Holy Edict.” Troy gestures with his mechanical arm. It reaches nearly across the table. “Saint Ur-Aurum isn’t much for corpses. Please do not be a corpse in his presence. Kay. Thanks. Bless you.” 

“Have you done that? Have you told the God King’s faithful that you want them alive?”

“See, I can’t. That’s not my job.”

Is this Sol’s job to keep people he’s not invested in alive? He has only one client. Does he placate their followers, or the ones they’re trying to palm off on him? He doesn’t want involved in this, and so shifts the subject. “Would you if you could?”

“I’d consider it.” A blackness crosses Troy’s eyes, faint and fleeting. His makeup does not conceal it. He still smiles besides. “C’mon. If it’s your only Holy Word, it’ll be all they do for you. Not die.”

“I will have my PR liaison contact yours with clarification on my position. I will then retire both of them.”

“To one of your personal ditches or one of your personal vacation planets? ‘Cause I like mine alright. Seems like a waste. And contradictory to what we’re talking about.”

“I see. I will arrange the latter,” says Sol. He adds, somewhat sincerely, “I appreciate you informing me of this matter privately. As a question, does Ur-Machina know any of the fine details?”

“She’s already forgotten, trust me. I appreciate you playing ball.”

“It’s strange to hear a god use that terminology.” 

“I’ve learned a few things. Like hospitality. Anything else I can do for you?” The way it’s asked— sly. So unlike the boy Sol met, all those years ago. 

“Yes,” says Sol.

Troy sits back on his couch. He lets his grin spread into his mouth mods and leans forward, propping his chin on his skin hand. Such an obvious telegraph of confidence. How do his people buy it? “That’s new,” he says. “Tell me, Sol.” He lets a whistle slip on the S. 

It’s much more pleasant than the way Tyreen says his name. 

Sol accepts this. He says some things of his own.

~*~

Sol waits in his quarters. Midnight has passed. He considers his remaining sandwich. That sandwich is meant for breakfast. Has he no self-control?

Plainly not as much as he thought. What will be the price for this one slip? He surmises, but he does not know. Then again, he does not know what the stock markets are going to do tomorrow. He surmises that as well.

He’s never asked anything not work-related of Troy. The boy, the God King, might take the events of the evening as a gesture of camaraderie. This might work to Sol’s advantage. Or it might destroy his esteem in the eyes of the man. 

As long as Tyreen and the filthy, talkative Saints don’t discover him.

But they discussed that possibility, him and Troy. Measures have been taken. 

Sol checks his hair in the surface of the hot tub. There is a chime at his door. A voice on the intercom announces, “Your charger, sir.”

Sol darts to the inside panel to respond. “Drop it off.” He then moves to the decorative physical door, opening it slowly, keeping behind it as he watches through the peephole for one person to enter. “A few steps inside,” he directs, moving behind her as she obliges so that when she turns around to the sound of his footfalls, he holds his back to the door and the gun on his hip where she can see it.

She is even more glorious up close. In the columned light of his quarters, she looms above him in the most enticing way. Her dark hair has been plaited with sinew and it trails along her ropey neck, down to her enormous chest. Her pauldrons sweep from her shoulders, a crush of steel and leather and lovingly-tended battle scars. Her hands, how huge and heavy and comforting to hold those gauntlets with the careless Eridium purple graffiti. She moves like a mountain range, slow and inevitable.

And when she smiles, her lips berry-stained again, her filed teeth glint.

It takes Sol a moment to say anything. When he does, the formality in his voice is forced and wretched to his own ears. “You will tell no one of what is about to happen.”

A rumble of laughter escapes her. “Well, yeah, Mister. I figured. I don’t get ordered to take a bath for any ol’ reason.”

“I see. Did you enjoy your bath?”

“It was nice.”

“Good, good.” Sol pauses. He approaches, drawn in by her magnitude. 

She crouches, her armor clanging as she does. Her head tilts to the side and he gets the most spectacular view of her jaw half-caught in shadow. 

“You see, a man of my stature has certain desires.”

“Ain’t most people?” says the magnetic Hag. She makes it sound so solid, so true.

Sol nods. He takes one more step. Just one, he tells himself, but it becomes two and his head tilts back to keep them eye-to-eye at this ever-shrinking distance. “I think so. Would you be open to indulging mine? That’s not an order.”

“Well, sure, Mister. I’m game.”

“Ah. Well then.”

Sol draws off, suddenly so his vision doesn’t snag on her. Then he shows her the contents of the last third of his briefcase.

~*~

Solomon Blatcjky is loose on Pandora. 

The hot desert night rips through his brain, all pleasure and anger and longing. The Holy City reels around him: people, places, filth and glory. Up close the neon is so clear and sharp and deliciously trash at its core. He wants to put it in his face until his face is gone.

But no. He will not cross that bridge. Why would he? Do that? Break from this moment of distilled ecstasy that is riding on a Hag’s shoulders?

Especially this Hag.

She’s so much more than magnetic. She runs like an engine piston, pumping through the streets. People dodge from her. Cars dodge from her. Screams and horns sound in her wake, a carnage of sound and steel. They leave a wake of confused smoke behind them, she and he.

They laugh. When she does it, his spine shakes and he must join her. It makes madness and communion out of the alienating nature of a city and two strangers. 

She joined him after all, once she knew. 

The only safe place for the remains of his old gear is his lunchbox. No one ever thinks of that. Sol himself sometimes pretends to forget it’s there. 

Tonight, he remembered. He donned the mask. He swiped boots from one of Troy’s personal mechanics with the God King’s own permission. He stuck his nose ring back in without a hole and the magnetic Hag cleaned up the blood with his scotch. Then she swigged the last of it herself. She beckoned him. Said it— “Up you go, Mister.”

He could not refuse her. 

So. He rides.

They make chaos, even among the revelers, the dark eyes in the brightness slamming apart around them. The magnetic Hag bellows and thrums. Beneath them, the street, the sand, the wreckage, the world, they pound with the bass of being.

Sol exists as a body of light among others, electric, different from them. He spins through an ecstasy of now. Yes, his life consists of figures and furtive movements. No, he cannot, will not return it to what it was. Most of all though, he does not need to remember when there was touch, violence and need. Tonight, he is, all those things too.

He howls: “Wheeeeeee!”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, BorderSpam! For your exceptional devotion to bringing us what we were denied by Gearbox (and letting me play with your stuff)! Also: Wat_are_dis for proofreading & all of the Leech Lord community for turning out and making this fandom a better place. 
> 
> There are a lot of complicated and silly reasons I asked to borrow Sol, but at the end of the day, he was a blast to write and that's all that matters. 
> 
> Hope you got a chuckle out of this. Thank you so much for reading, everyone.


End file.
